AGP Card Help

Hi, will be receiving a Gainward BLISS GF 7800GS+ Silent, 512 MB AGP Graphic Card in about a week.

I'm unsure if my power supply is upto the job. I have a 500W supply but only 16A at +12V.

I don't know what power the card needs but I think it will need a 20A system.

My system is simple - an 80Gb HDD and DVD/CD-RW drive. Also a P4 3Gz and 1.5Gb memory.

Should I even try the card on my system or should I get a beefier PSU in advance? Any inexpensive suggestions?

(The power connector at the card is a 6 pin PCIe connector but comes with a pair of molex(4) to a PCIe adapter. So on my current setup I would need to use this adapter - would a better P4 PSU have a PCIe power connector as standard?)

Sorry for such a long post.
Any help appreciated
Jim

I have a 450w supply on a old a64 newcastle 3000+ with a 7800GS, 200GB ATA hd, 16x dvd/cd rw and 1gb DDR ram often have external USB drives and things plugged in with no worries here.

I think my CPU is one of the least efficient ones, and has the old socket 754 that came before the 939 and AM2 ones. Heh my CPU uses 90 watts double the newer AM2 ones.

I think you will be safe as long as the PSU is of good quality

Just to add to some sort of confirmation, you should be fine. 16A should be able to do the job just fine, and if not, power supplies really aren't that difficult or expensive (about the price of a game these days if you do you research, can get expensive for a quality one though) to replace, so you're I don't think you're in a situation where you'll have any problems running with the card.

Doing a quick search seems to suggest that you meet the requirements, but I guess that mostly comes down to who manufactured your card and such. Again, worst-case scenario is you'll just have to swap out your PSU.

Thanks guys, the PSU is a SumVision which I don't think is of that 'good' quality. Not a name I'd heard of.

My current card is a Radeon 9800Pro 128Mb and works fine ... how much more power would be needed for my new card? Maybe more for the extra memory?

I'll see how it goes
Thanks
Jim

I have that card and it takes 2 power lines. You might be alright - but you might want to consider a 600W power supply to be safe though. I had a 400W power supply and it caused some systems problems and eventual told me it was lowering it's capacity to prevent the system locking up. I upgraded to a 800W power supply and have had no problems since.

you could try this PSU calculator.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine

I only need about 220 watts for my system, but don't use any PCI cards or anything.

At the end of the day it sounds like you currently have some kind of generic PSU in your current system, perhaps one that comes with the case manufacturers. So I'd recommend getting a new PSU anyway, You don't need crazy power ratings on the box. If you check reviews online you will see that some 600w PSU's are as low as 460w whilst a good 450W may only be 30w less.

Thats what I found when I was researching for my purchase a few months back. You don't need a super powerfull one unless your going to have 2 vid cards. Most decent PSU's will have 3 or more rails, just use seperate ones for you GPU, CPU and drives.

just noticed yours was a 7800GS not 7600GS. Nvidia recommends a 350w or higher PSU for that card

my 7600GS 90nm seems to use very little power, 13.7 - 27.4 watts my old 6600GT used up to 50w!

Was surprised when my 7600 used passive cooling outside of games, now I know why :)

Steve, what power supply did you get?

Also, I don't understand why the card needs to be connected to 2 molex power lines, surely attaching one molex would be enough.

Evak, looks like I'll need about 60 Watts. I think the AGP slot provides about 40 Watts, so I'll only need a couple of extra amps from the molex? (PSU calculator says 291 Watts)

Thanks
Jim

The graphics card requires a fair amount of power - and you are advised in the documentation to ensure you have a suitable PSU. I guess you can't put too much power into 1 line.

I like to have a quiet PC (nothing worse than trying to concentrate and you have the PC doing an impression of a vacuum cleaner). So I tend to buy my components from http://www.quietpc.com/ . I bought this 800W PSU http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/psus-601-1000/x-red-psus

I've since been told you don't quite get the full 800W as advertised. Don't know if that is strictly true, but I'm not bothered because it's quiet and has plenty of power for my system.